People pay attention to what you say, and they adapt their behaviour accordingly.  If you say that something is important or you mention it often, then they treat it as important.   If you rarely mention something, then they treat it as unimportant.  

This is not about inspiring Churchillian speeches but rather about the minutiae of day-to-day communications.

We did an experiment with one organisation we worked with.  We tracked every management communication for several months and found that over two-thirds of them were about internal processes and procedures.   You can guess what the people in that organisation prioritised – over and above profitability and customer service. 

Everyone knows that it is vital to get the content and tone of internal comms right, but it is also important to balance what you talk about.  You are silently signalling to people that certain topics are important enough for you to talk about repeatedly – and others are not important enough to get a mention.   People respond to that, just as they respond to the way that you speak to them, whether that is open and friendly or authoritarian or patronising.

This is not about a single communication, but about the pattern over time.   It’s about balance – between positive and negative, between fun and social against business focused, between the various different aspects of the business that warrant communication “from the top”.  What are the hidden messages that people are getting from your internal communications?   Start tracking that today, and make any adjustments necessary. 

People don’t just pay attention to what you say – they also watch what you do very closely, and they imitate you.  If your words and your actions are inconsistent, they will pay attention to what you actually do.  As the old saying goes “actions speak louder than words”.

What issues do you spend your time on?  What is your management style?   What is your decision making style?   Do you consult widely, or do you speak only to other senior managers?     Is your focus mainly internal, or mainly external?  Are you open to new ideas or are you very cautious about anything new?   What information do you pay attention to – and what information do you ignore?  What is really important to you?

People observe all of these aspects of your behaviour very carefully, even if they are not aware of it.   They then take their cue from you, and mirror your behaviour and your priorities.  They do this almost without being aware that they are doing it.   As primates, we are hard wired to imitate the behaviour of others, particularly higher status individuals.    

It is part of the culture of any organisation to pay a great deal of attention to certain elements of its business, and to ignore others.  You can’t focus on everything.    If you change the focus, this in turn changes what people pay attention to and prioritise, which in turn changes how they do their jobs, which in turn changes the results the company gets. 

Do people see you spending your time and energy focusing on the right things – the things that you want the organisation to prioritise?   Audit what you are seen publicly spending your time on – and ask your staff what they think you spend your time on (their perception may be very different to yours).   Then adjust as necessary and observe the results.  

Corporate habits are just like personal habits – they are the way that people naturally do things without thinking.  If you ask people why they do things that way, the answer will often be “that’s just the way we do things around here”.  These corporate habits are a direct expression of the culture of the organisation.  Like culture itself, they often develop over time almost randomly – there is often little rhyme or reason to them, and they often survive long after the initial rationale for doing something in a particular way has disappeared.  Sometimes they can be helpful shortcuts, but sometimes they get in the way of the company operating efficiently or achieving its objectives.

These habits don’t just include certain ways of doing things.  They can also include a particular way of viewing the world and certain way of thinking – certain attitudes towards staff, competitors, the market, customers or the business.  This can create blind spots as people fail to consider any alternative perspective.  

Changing these corporate habits can be very hard work because they are so ingrained.  You can meet a lot of resistance.  But the scope to change the ways the organisation operates are obvious.  You can tailor-make new habits that are designed around your corporate strategy and the way you need the organisation to function in order to maximise your results.

Try to change just one small corporate habit, and observe the knock-on effects.  Even something as simple as making a minor change to a report format might allow more relevant information to flow through the organisation, thus removing frustrations, improving efficiency and giving customers a better experience.  

Most people don’t think about the way that they make decisions.  They don’t give any thought to the information that they call upon before making the decision or the analysis they do.   More often than not people rely on instinct (rather than a more structured process) to make decisions, and they are not even aware that there are other ways of going about decision making.  They do not use any system or technique to identify the various different choices, nor do they use any of the available tools to evaluate and compare the various alternatives.  They just think that all of this is much too obvious to need a system – but they are wrong.

Changing the way that decisions are made can have a big impact on results.  It can also have a significant influence on culture.   If management are seen to consider certain factors when making decisions, those factors become important within the company.  Equally, the company’s culture will devalue and ignore things that are rarely considered when making decisions.   Those are enormous influences on the company – but managements are often blind to them because they mirror their own approaches.  

If senior management adopt a particular style of decision making and consider certain factors in their decisions, that will tend to cascade down the organisation.   Managers at lower levels will be keen for senior managers to support and approve of their decisions, and so will consider the same factors and adopt the same decision making techniques.

Try this experiment.   For a few months, adopt a more structured approach to decision making.  Make clear which factors you are going to consider when making any major decision, what methods you are going to use to generate alternative possible courses of action and what methods you are going to use to evaluate those alternatives (based on your list of key factors).  Write it all down, including your evaluations and your rationale for your final decision.   That will seem cumbersome at first, but bear with it.  You will quickly notice that the priorities that are reflected in your decision making process are pursued more keenly by the company as a whole.   And your decision making may well improve too.  

The structure you put around people has a profound impact on the way they do their day-to-day jobs.  Structure can include anything from reporting lines and team structure to rules and regulations to seating plans and office environment.  Each of these can determine the way that people do everyday tasks and in particular who they interact with and what they prioritise.  This can have a huge impact on results.  

Two people who sit next to each other will interact far more than if they were on different floors.  If you have a multi stage process where each stage is handled by a different person, obviously that process will be better coordinated if one person hands each job on to someone sitting next to them.  This is the basis of the factory production line.  But not everyone can sit next to every other person, so operational priorities have to be made.   Where does the organisation gain most via better coordination, and where is it less important? Getting this right can make a big difference both to performance levels and to the approach taken to the work. 

Similarly, adding extra steps or double checks into a process, or changing reporting lines, can have a significant impact on attitude, performance and on perceptions of what the task is all about.  For example, suppose you have a team that is only responsible for sales (but not for delivery/implementation).  The Head of Sales will push them to sell more and more, even if the delivery team is struggling to keep up and customer satisfaction is suffering.   The sales and delivery teams are probably antagonistic and blame each other when things go wrong.  If you put the two teams next to each other or combine the two teams under a single manager then the sales team will naturally begin to ensure that what they sell is deliverable.  Their perception of their role will change.  They are no longer just selling a product, but also taking responsibility for good delivery or implementation as well.  

Changing structure is so powerful that it takes a complete and thorough understanding of all elements of operations to make changes effectively.  Unintended consequences can be very damaging, so caution is advised. 

Next time you make a structural change, don’t just look at how it impacts the raw numbers.   Observe too how it subtly changes perceptions, behaviours and attitudes, and how that in turn changes how people do their jobs (and what that means for customers).

The stories that people tell about your business are very powerful.  That could be your brand story, but for these purposes we are mostly concerned with the narratives and beliefs about the company that circulate among management and employees.   Those narratives aren’t just established and maintain via the stories that are told and re-told – about what the CEO did at the Christmas party, or about that time that Bill landed that amazing sale.  They are also embedded in traditions, ceremonies, celebrations and other events.   What do these say about the company, its priorities and its culture? What elements of the business do people talk about?  What people and successes are celebrated – and which are not celebrated?

These narrative elements make a huge difference to the way in which people inside the company see their work, their roles and the company itself. The stories don’t have to be profound or world changing, in fact the simpler the better.  A simple underlying message often has more emotional resonance, and is therefore usually the best way to engage your employees and give them a sense of belonging and of common purpose.

Story telling is a great way to build a sense of identity and bind employees into the company’s mission.  There is an old story about John F. Kennedy meeting a janitor on a visit to the NASA Space Centre.  Noticing the janitor mopping the corridor, the President asked him what he was doing.  Without missing a beat, the janitor replied “I’m helping to put a man on the moon, Mr President.”

An obvious question is how to tell and seed such stories and narratives into the fabric of your company.  You could do what we did and make it a habit to discuss why we founded our company and what we want to do for customers.  You could include appropriate story telling about your business in final round interviews of prospective employees. You can also tell stories and build narratives through actions – you can build up an identity and a narrative through the things that you choose to celebrate, through the welcome given to new joiners and even through the reception people get when they arrive at work in the morning.

Do an audit of the stories that your organisation tells about itself, and about the messages these send.  Ask other people.  Look at your corporate presentations, senior management addresses, customs and traditions, the way meetings are framed and conducted, the way that the company is introduced to new customers and suppliers.   There is a story in everything – even the way the office is laid out.  Find those stories, compile them, and change the story if the current one does not fit.